T.J. Donovan, the state’s attorney for Chittenden County, explains a new initiative in Burlington, Vermont,
that mandates community restitution and participation in social services as alternatives to court or incarceration.
ROBERT
V. WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation and I’m
here with T.J. Donovan, the state’s attorney of Chittenden County, Vermont, which includes Burlington. That’s
the state’s largest city, is that right?
T.J. DONOVAN: That’s
correct.
WOLF: Well, thanks for talking to me.
DONOVAN:
Happy to be here.
WOLF: You’re here at the Center for Court
Innovation today with about 20 people who are participating in a roundtable to share ideas about community engagement.
You guys have spent the morning talking about the different the programs you’ve started or are involved in that
actively involve community members. I thought we’d start out by talking to you about the experiences that have
helped shape your outlook as a prosecutor.
DONOVAN: Sure. You know,
I grew up in Burlington, Vermont, certainly made a number of bad judgments and mistakes as a young person. I was
given the opportunity for second chances numerous times—not that I was a child of privilege, but rather I came from
a two-parent home with some resources, with a family that had been embedded in the community. And I think that reflecting
back on that, I was probably the beneficiary of many second chances for some of my youthful exuberance. And when
I became a prosecutor first in Philadelphia, and then in Burlington, Vermont, it was not lost on me that we were
prosecuting people, both African-Americans and white people, who came from poverty, who came from places with a lack
of resources. They came from marginalized places in the world and I began to realize that we were continuing to marginalize
them through the criminal justice system, whether it be for drug prosecution or mental health illnesses that caused
criminal behavior, often times those individuals who don’t come from a family of resources, the first time they
get that intervention or assistance is through the criminal justice system as opposed to somebody who does come from
a family of resources—that intervention is often happening much earlier in time and they are being kept out of the
criminal justice system.
So, as we continued to work in the court system, some things weren’t
changing. The recidivism rate was extremely high, about 50 to 60 percent in Vermont. The budget for the Department
of Corrections kept increasing and we weren’t getting good results. And we kept seeing the same people, and
the demographic I saw were mostly poor people, people who had lack of education, lack of job skills or job training,
substance abuse issues—both alcohol and drugs—and mental health issues. And where we thought we could engage and
make a difference was by intervening earlier in the process to keep these individuals out of the criminal justice
system. They were committing crimes that—not that we’re condoning any criminal activity—but they were committing
crimes that were low-level misdemeanors. And so the question was, what are we gonna do that’s gonna keep the
community safe and enhance public safety? And we started to say we need to address the root cause of their criminal
behavior. So we were able to obtain funding for a community coordinator whose job was to bring those community groups
into the court system, because in the past what we’ve done is we’ve put people on probation, we load them
up with conditions of probation, and then we push them back out into the community and say you’re on your own.
Often times they come back on a violation of probation and we lock them up. So the community coordinator was to screen
cases as they came in, conduct somewhat informal risk assessments on these individuals, and then link these people
with the appropriate social service agency to address the root cause of their behavior in lieu of prosecution. So
far the results are good. It’s very early in the process but I think we’re seeing that when given an opportunity,
many time this is the first time these people have been given an opportunity. People try to make the most of it.
WOLF: When did you start this project?
DONOVAN:
We started it last September.
WOLF: Who is eligible, generally speaking?
I mean, you described sort of a broad profile.
DONOVAN: Yeah, let
me say who’s not eligible. Obviously we’re not gonna divert any cases that are sex crimes, any cases that
are domestic violence, any cases that are serious felonies, any cases where ther...
